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You seem to be assuming that UBI qualitative effects are scale invariant for both population and time. Why do you assume that? There is a tendency among many p

You seem to be assuming that UBI qualitative effects are scale invariant for both population and time. Why do you assume that? There is a tendency among many people to give precedence to a scientific study over pure reasoning even when the degree of relevance of the scientific study is tiny. It’s like schools don’t teach how to determine if a study is applicable and so people often do it very clumsily. This is a dangerous error.

viraptor 2y ago
Because the same potential issue has been rised every time. And every experiment on a scale bigger than before shows the problem doesn't happen. I wish more people were saying "let's keep scaling the experiments up to see where it stops working" rather than repeating that it won't. I'm not saying I'm 100% certain it is invariant. Just that we should stop repeating the tropes that so far haven't been shown true.
- pfannkuchen 2y ago
  What potential risks of UBI do you think the existing studies rule out? I think pro UBI people often straw man anti UBI arguments as a disguised belief that Group X is lazy. I think pro UBI people do this because they are morally triggered by discriminatory work ethic beliefs (fair enough). I think that people who cite these studies might see the studies as ruling out the straw man, which makes them feel fuzzy self righteous feelings, but to me the studies do not even remotely address what I see as the actual risks of at scale UBI deployment.
  - viraptor 2y ago
    It's simply: So far almost every experiment I've seen had positive outcomes in terms of employment, physical and mental health, overall happiness / stress reduction. That means we should keep expanding this until either we find actual problems to deal with or everyone is on UBI. We can spend ages trying to come up with various risks to rule out, but... what's the point in practice? We're basically agreed that we don't really 100% know how people will behave at scale. Worst case, we can discover and deal with real problems. Best case, it works great at scale as it does in small tests.
    - lotsoweiners 2y ago
      Unfortunately you can’t apply your Agile methodologies to UBI. I want to know about every possible tax edge case funding it because inevitably the upper class will find ways around paying for UBI. You don’t want it to become like Social Security where there is risk of insolvency in future generations.
    - pfannkuchen 2y ago
      The risks of UBI don't exist at the level of the individual. They exist at the system level. Studying individual level effects does not tell us anything about system level effects.

viraptor 2y ago

Because the same potential issue has been rised every time. And every experiment on a scale bigger than before shows the problem doesn't happen. I wish more people were saying "let's keep scaling the experiments up to see where it stops working" rather than repeating that it won't. I'm not saying I'm 100% certain it is invariant. Just that we should stop repeating the tropes that so far haven't been shown true.

pfannkuchen 2y ago
What potential risks of UBI do you think the existing studies rule out? I think pro UBI people often straw man anti UBI arguments as a disguised belief that Group X is lazy. I think pro UBI people do this because they are morally triggered by discriminatory work ethic beliefs (fair enough). I think that people who cite these studies might see the studies as ruling out the straw man, which makes them feel fuzzy self righteous feelings, but to me the studies do not even remotely address what I see as the actual risks of at scale UBI deployment.
- viraptor 2y ago
  It's simply: So far almost every experiment I've seen had positive outcomes in terms of employment, physical and mental health, overall happiness / stress reduction. That means we should keep expanding this until either we find actual problems to deal with or everyone is on UBI. We can spend ages trying to come up with various risks to rule out, but... what's the point in practice? We're basically agreed that we don't really 100% know how people will behave at scale. Worst case, we can discover and deal with real problems. Best case, it works great at scale as it does in small tests.
  - lotsoweiners 2y ago
    Unfortunately you can’t apply your Agile methodologies to UBI. I want to know about every possible tax edge case funding it because inevitably the upper class will find ways around paying for UBI. You don’t want it to become like Social Security where there is risk of insolvency in future generations.
  - pfannkuchen 2y ago
    The risks of UBI don't exist at the level of the individual. They exist at the system level. Studying individual level effects does not tell us anything about system level effects.